I am working full tilt to live the life I want to live. I have made a TON of changes. Some I’m following through, others are falling flat.

Consider this post an overarching status update. A reset, if you will.

I figure I have to be at ground zero before I can move forward.

The Road to Now

This year, around mid-January, I decided I needed to make a change in my life. I know I’m lazy. I would just as soon lay on the couch watching TV as do something, anything, productive. It was in January that I decided to make the change.

I had moved away from Northern Michigan to Southern Ohio a few months before and I was living alone in a tiny apartment. My wife stayed in Michigan with the baby and the dogs, partly to oversee the sale of the house and partly because it’s a bitch to find a place to rent that will accept two dogs and a cat.

So I was alone in a tiny, dark, cold apartment. And I was doing even less than usual. I would head to work in the morning, leave at 5 pm, go back to the apartment, and go to bed. As lazy as I am, even I thought that sucked. I was compelled, while I was on my own, to try and change some fundamental habits in my life.

I was alone. I figured I could reconfigure my habits without any interruption.

I took to the interwebz to find ways to build better habits.

One of the few blogs I follow is The Art of Manliness. Too often in today’s society people try to give men the impression that being a man is a bad thing. That men should somehow stop being men and be something else, something kinder, something gentler. I like The Art of Manliness because they unapologetically remind men that it’s ok to be men.

I don’t believe I’m doing them justice. I highly suggest that you browse through their archives to take a look at what they’re all about. I’ll wait.

The Art of Manliness had run a series of articles a while back about building habits. I reread a few of them over the course of about a week.

Then, come January, they posted an article called Jumpstart Your Journaling: A 31-day Challenge. They provided 31 prompts, one for each day in January, with the aim of forging a regular journaling habit.

I didn’t read the article until about mid-way through January, but I bought a cheap journal at Walmart and started the challenge.

There were a few days in their that I skipped. I was travelling back and forth between Ohio and Michigan. There were a couple of driving days that I didn’t arrive until after midnight. For the most part, however, I completed the challenge.

I’ve been keeping a regular, hand written journal, ever since.

On to Bigger and Better Things

My goal in starting the journal challenge was to form a habit. I figured that if I built good habits then doing shit would be normal, and being lazy would feel weird.

A lofty goal, I know.

But journaling was easy. Pretty soon I got to the point that not journaling felt weird. I have had some gaps, a couple of days where I didn’t write, but I’m always itching to get back to it.

So I decided to move on and forge even more habits.

Somewhere along the line I stumbled across Joel Runyan’s blog. I guess the best description of Joel is an online marketer. He runs Impossible Ventures, a company that helps gain traffic for online businesses.

Again, check him out. I’m probably not doing it justice.

Joel’s philosophy, in a nutshell, is that nothing is impossible. There are a ton of things that we believe are impossible. But there are very few things that are actually impossible if you have enough drive.

Or, in the immortal words of Tommy Lee Jones:

Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.

It was mostly Joel’s tone that kept me coming back. A “just fucking do it” type of attitude. It reminnds me of me. Quit bitching and go do it.

Anyway, on there is a subsection on ImpossibleHQ about Cold Shower Therapy. Joel cites the health benefits of taking ice cold showers. It intrigued me, so I tried it.

It sucks, but it’s so awesome.

I can’t vouch for the health benefits, but I can vouch for the psychological benefits of cold showers. I have hot water available. I could be comfortable. But turning that dial to cold and standing under the stinging water is saying “fuck you, I’m doing it anyway.”

I love it.

But What Does It All Mean Basil?

Overall I fought, and am still fighting, to fundamentally change the way my life works. I want to make things happen rather than have them happen to me.

I started a regular, daily journal.

I stepped out of my comfort zone and started taking ice cold showers.

I started waking up three hours early.

I started writing a novel.

I started a blog that, as of today at least, has more posts than any of the failed sites I created before.

I started planning at least two more works of fiction (deets on those to come later).

I quit smoking.

I bit off a helluva lot, especially for someone that has effectively accomplished nothing outside of his standard nine to five. And I’ve stumbled along the way.

That’s really the point. It’s not that I’m doing a lot of shit (for me), but that I’m doing it and failing. I’m not going balls out and having things fall into place.

I’m ok with the stumbles. If I didn’t stumble I wouldn’t be trying.

There are gaps in my journal. In fact this morning was the first time in two weeks I’ve written anything.

Same story with my novel. I haven’t written anything in two weeks. I quit writing so I could spend time with my family in the morning. I didn’t write at night so I could be with my wife after the baby went to sleep. Last week I didn’t write any of it because I was out of town on business. We left the hotel early and got back too late for me to write.

I’m behind on the blog. I was about two weeks ahead. But I haven’t written anything substantive in at least two weeks, for the same reasons as above.

I didn’t write any more of the rough draft of the new work of fiction I mentioned before.

I haven’t been getting up on time. Sure, my alarm goes off at five. I lay there, awake, and hit the snooze until my writing time is all chewed up by my lazy ass laying in bed.

It’s How We Get Back Up

I have been damn disheartened the last couple of days. Not writing for two weeks is a bullshit excuse. I know it, but it didn’t stop me from tossing that bullshit out anyway. I even mentioned that I was stopping for a bit on this site.

I have been down because I felt myself slipping back into my “old” habits. I don’t want that. I like the new habits.

So here it is: I’m back.

I’m going to journal every day.

I’m going to wake up at five a.m. every day.

I’m going to take a cold shower every day.

I’m going to produce blog content every day.

I’m going to create a life that I want to live.

It’s time to nut up or shut up.

photo credit: Wonderlane via photopin cc>